Farmisht and Farklempt

Farmisht: (adj.)(Yiddish) Befuddled, mixed up, confused
Farklempt: (adj.)(Yiddish) depressed, distraught; choked up, extremely emotional, on the verge of tears; grieving

How odd that a couple of Yiddish words would best describe my Christian Crisis. My Therapist Would Say this is worth $110. Everyone else would say I'm certifiable. I'm not sure they'd be wrong.

Sometimes, when you get far enough away from something, you get the idea that it would be OK to toy with it. Looking at the sun through a pin-hole box during an eclipse is an example. Lobbing rocks into the Grand Canyon from behind the railing is another. Talking long distance with an old flame....that sort of thing.

I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but I unwittingly invited a Clash of the Titans into my head when I started toying with the notion of going back to church. For several days, I've been listening to little other than Southern Gospel - hymns, most notably. Before I sound truly crazy, let me say that I don't have any doubts about my sexuality. Twenty years has proven it to be pretty much entrenched and undeniable. I'm not close to splitting hairs between "gay" and "homosexual" and giving the keynote address at an Exodus, Int'l convention (which I hear are thinly veiled orgies, anyway). But I've moved two big concepts into one small room of my head and it's gotten pretty crowded.

I've struck up a dialogue with someone who is travelling the same road from the opposite direction, more or less. He's never really left the confines of the Christian fortress but struggles with acknowledging and managing an orientation that seems so incompatible with that world. I left it in a blaze of glory and swore I would never go back. And now I'm inching toward it knowing full well how this plays out in the end. It's not the first time I've inched. I've raced back before. It hasn't ever worked for very long.

This will make no sense to anyone who grew up outside of Fundamental Christianity, so you should stop reading here if you're already confused. My prose is tortured on the best days and today is going to be one of the worst days as I try to get the relevant questions down on paper for my own benefit. I have to enumerate some of my beliefs so I can, at least, see the conflicts. This may be the single craziest thing I've ever done. But I miss it. I can't lie. I miss church and singing and the undeniable presence of the supernatural that only a fool could miss when it happens. We grow up with a belief in those circles that once you've experienced that "touch", you will never walk comfortably outside it. That's probably nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. But maybe it's not.

I believe in God. I believe that I was known before I was born. I also believe that this is a truth outside the limits of what the Constitution allows the government to endorse, so it should not be taught in schools.

I believe that God has a plan for my life, no matter what I wrote before. I believe that individuals can be in and out of God's will. I believe I was supposed to minister. I don't believe that walking away from that made my Grandfather crazy, although that is a tempting, nagging, and narcissistic thought. I've lived 20 years as an openly, happily Gay Man. I've lived half of that time as an openly Gay Man with HIV/AIDS. It doesn't take a genius to figure out whether one can backtrack and pick up where one left off with the ministry gig.

I believe that I am gay, homosexual, etc. Of the Big Three beliefs, this is the one for which I have absolute, irrefutable proof - and references! I believe that I have been so inclined since my youngest memory. I have seen 16 mm film of me on a tricycle at age 3, I think, waving furiously at the camera with a wrist that apparently has no tendons or ligaments. No straight person waves like that - even at age 3. Jokes aside, there wasn't a lot of conscious thought put into this. I was always going to "be this way". I don't know whether I was born this way or made this way. I still don't think it matters. I am this way. That matters.

I believe that one cannot honestly walk away from their love tendency (to take sex out of the equation). I think if we are wired or groomed or born or nudged into a gender attraction that we will always love in that direction. Whether celibacy or pure whoredom ensues does not stop us from loving who we're going to love. No religion I can name identifies the love as bad. They usually focus on the sex. But...and this is where I struggle... Christianity teaches us that "such as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." That's a big one. It seems to say that whether you ever acted on it or not, if the inclination is still there you're still on the cosmic hook for it.

I believe no one has ever gotten out from under the inclination of homosexuality. If true, and if there is no room in heaven for the homo, then anyone with the inclination is "lost" from the outset. One might change one's behaviors, but if the inclination remains, she's putting lipstick on a pig. I wish I didn't believe this dire, damning theory. I wish I didn't. I wish I could embrace both the faith and the faygelah openly and equally and with abandon. But I acknowledge the conflict.

For nearly 20 years, I've tossed my faith overboard to keep the ship afloat. Improbably, it's crawled back aboard - coughing, hacking, a little worse for the wear. It's a little like the soap opera story line where neither the villain nor the heroine ever really dies - no matter what they say. I'm completely flummoxed that I even have this internal crisis going on right now. I'm about as together on this topic as a person gets, I thought.

They used to ask me, during that brief revival when I would "testify" to having lived as a gay man, if it was "gone", if I'd "repented", if I called it "sin". The only answer I could ever use with complete and total honesty was, "I want God's best for me." I did. And I do.

I spent all day yesterday locked indoors banging my head against the wall with this, telling myself to snap out of it. Nothing snapped. Nothing clicked, either. I told someone yesterday this is a little like ripping stitches out and hoping your arm doesn't fall off. It's a lot like picking at a scab and being fascinated that the wound is still there. Both sides of my brain insist that the whole would be a lot better off without the other half. That's the very definition of crazy, I'm sure.

No wonder I've ended up in the ditch.